The popularity of Youtube has exploded in Ireland over the last few years. Last week we caught up with daily vlogger Jonathan Saccone-Joly to discuss life on YouTube. Today is the turn of Sinéad Cady, Ireland’s most subscribed female YouTuber. Sinead, was an early adopter of YouTube and is a true success story of the creative platform; going from being denied a place on a makeup course to having 424,123 subscribers watching and learning from her videos, which she uploads three times a week

Tell us about life before the vlogs.

Before I started “TheMakeupChair” life was really boring. I finished school and was working part time as a sales assistant. I applied for a makeup course in Cork College of Commerce only to be refused (twice) so I was feeling very frustrated that I couldn’t get any work or training in the makeup industry. I went online and bought lots of makeup books and started teaching myself makeup at home.

How did you get started on YouTube?

One night when I was Googling makeup I found makeup tutorials on YouTube. I started watching them and realised there wasn’t many videos explaining the basics for beginners. I really wanted to share what I’d learnt for beginners so I created my first video – How to tell if you are a Warm/Cool/Neutral undertone and then I started uploading regularly on different subjects. Luckily this got me a place in Cork College of Commerce and I studied there for a year which was a great experience.

At what point did you discover that you could make a career out of YouTube?

Throughout my year of college I still tried to upload once a week. It was tricky at times but the views and the support I got from my followers really made it worthwhile. I applied for a second makeup course the following year but a few weeks in I became extremely unhappy and I struggled to keep up with my video uploads. It was then that I decided to leave college and try to make it as a makeup artist with the skills I had already learnt. It was a difficult choice to make and most people thought I was crazy to drop out but my family where really supportive. About two years ago YouTube took off for me with many of my videos reaching over a million views. That’s when I realised this could be a business!

What has been the highlight of your YouTube career?

It’s hard to pick one highlight for the whole thing. Every day I get messages from women of all ages telling me that my videos make them feel confident and happy. To me that’s the best part of the whole experience!

Any advice for young people thinking about a career in vlogging?

For anyone who is thinking about starting on YouTube make sure you have a tough skin, YouTube is wonderful and scary all at the same time. Though I rarely get any “hate” you have to be able to deal with it when it comes!

When you share your life with the world are there privacy concerns in the future?

I never worry about privacy because I never over share anything about myself. I keep my life pretty private. My videos are more about makeup and beauty and hardly ever about me personally.

What does 2014 hold in store for The Make Up Chair and what are your opinions on the long term future of YouTube businesses?

The next two years are going to be really exciting, I’m working on something special which I can’t speak about just yet but it links back to my channel which will continue to have makeup lessons and fun beauty reviews and tutorials! As long as people keep watching I will keep creating videos!